I finally started school again sometime in July this year and it's been 3 months plus at a wonderful secondary school. :) The academic year has officially ended so here are some of my experiences and thoughts.
Ever since I started teaching proper, I have been plagued with countless questions on ‘teaching’ in general – how to keep my students in order, what to say when students misbehave, how to deliver a lesson effectively, how to engage them such that they become excited and motivated to learn, how to develop a positive classroom culture, when to use the hard or soft approach, and the list goes on and on. With that amount of inexperience and uncertainty, I cannot bear to imagine what my first three months as a beginning teacher would have been like without the sincere care, generous support and guidance from my teacher mentor. I have learnt very much and am still learning from his dedication and integrity as a musician and music teacher, his meticulous and disciplined work habits, as well as his respect and care for students, colleagues, superiors and other members of the PRCS community in the way he interacts with them. For this, I am extremely grateful for my teacher mentor, Marvin.
Sometime towards the end of August, with Marvin’s recommendation, I had the opportunity to sit in one of June’s classes (Sec 1/7) in a bid to figure out the various aspects of ‘teaching’ I have mentioned above which I find so difficult to grasp. I was immediately drawn towards how comfortable and relaxed her classroom atmosphere and the pace of her lesson was. With some prodding, students were able to respond freely and orderly and not surprisingly manage to cover much lesson content. It was clear that she was in complete control of the lesson/class and that gave students the sense of security, hence the comfortable pace and willingness to respond and learn. After class, I posed her the million-dollar question, “how do you achieve that??” Her response was simple and said that I first need to have a strong grasp of the subject/lesson content in order to be in control.
Immediately it struck a chord. I mentally scanned through my teaching experiences thus far and could identify specific lessons that were more successful because of my familiarity with the lesson content, as well as unsuccessful lessons because of the lack of it.
An example of the more successful lesson was the one for the O Level Music class on Chinese music traditions as part of the world music component. I was familiar with it mostly because I learnt it as a student myself previously. As a result I was able to scaffold their learning process in terms of meaningful activities and handouts that gave them the ability to think and listen for themselves as opposed to me simply presenting them with the information. To introduce cipher notation, I first gave them the score of the well-known song Spirited Away but written in cipher notation. I explained several rules about the notation and then they had to figure out the score themselves and play it in three-parts on the Orff xylophones. Listening activities followed after. They certainly learnt as I assessed them at the end of the lesson and they also had fun with the ensemble playing. Familiarity with the content allowed the freedom and confidence to answer students’ queries and for organized learning to take place.
An example of an unsuccessful lesson was the one for the GMP class on community songs in preparation for National Day. I did have lesson materials such as the video clips for those songs as well as PowerPoint slides in the style of the game show Don’t forget the Lyrics! for the activity. Like most typical students, they enjoyed the videos but were not very keen on singing these songs. Forced repetition was worse as it made them become slightly rebellious as they wanted fun and began to make fun of the songs. In that state, the game show activity did not work well either. I remember looking at the clock and desperately wondering what to do with the class for the remaining 20min. Resorting to playing videos would have been the easy way out just to keep them entertained but then the students would not have learnt anything musical and I would have wasted the music lesson. As much as I wanted to, I was simply unable to carry on with the singing and activity. I was terribly lost. On hindsight, this boils down to familiarity with the subject content as June advised. Being able to sing the songs was just barely scraping the surface, I should have asked myself questions such as ‘Why do we celebrate National Day? Why do we sing community songs? And why were these songs written in the first place?’ I learnt the lesson when Marvin admonished students (from another class but similar lesson) on their complacency and ungratefulness to their forefathers who toiled hard to give them what Singapore Singapore
In addition to having a strong grasp of the lesson content, the lesson/unit structure is no less important. This refers to the need for perspective when formulating the unit plan, time frame, type of assessment, down to preempting the necessary details for each lesson. I’m still in the midst of trying to figure this out so I’m unable to pen my thoughts on this for now. I’ve had glimpses of it though. Here’s an example with my Sec 1/7 music keyboard lessons. 1/7 has indeed been challenging for me most of the time. Week after week I observed a pattern in their behaviour that they are usually more cooperative and on task at the start of the lesson, and then gradually become chaotic towards the last 15-20 minutes. Initially I didn’t know why. I resisted having to ask Marvin if he could sit in because I wanted to try again and was hoping that I would manage the class better the following week. Well, things got quite out of hand so in the end I had Marvin drop by to take a look and to troubleshoot. After that session, his response came as a slew of questions, “Did you identify and separate those students who already have music/piano background? Did you give them more challenging or the same piece of music to work on as the others? Did you have extra pieces of music for students who have completed their task ahead of the rest? Were there special seating arrangements? Clear and challenging targets for students to meet at the end of each lesson?” My response was a series of sheepish ‘no’ and ‘half-yes’. These questions seem quite obvious now but definitely not at that time. From that perspective, a well-structured lesson would have eliminated a large amount of the negative behavioural responses that were displayed each week. Not only that, I was also made aware of real classroom applications of differentiated learning for students of varying abilities from this experience.
Several of such learning experiences the past few months have certainly served to show me the reality of teaching. ‘I feel like I’m finally back on earth,’ I shared one afternoon. I’ve always wanted to teach from a young age but had in mind lofty and cotton-candy ideas of being a carefree and wonderful teacher with eager students. Far from that, I realized wanting to be a good teacher is an arduous task and a formidable skill to acquire that requires much determination, time, effort and love. I came to recognize this reality after a bout of discouragement during the first two months when I compared the lessons Marvin and I conducted. Marvin and I would conduct the exact same lesson for certain classes and I observed that in his class, the students are generally bubbling over with excitement and eagerness to complete their tasks/assignments. However in my class, using the same resources, students were at times reluctant to do any work and some were even confused with what they were supposed to do. At that time I wondered what was wrong because I had thought that having ‘transferred’ all the necessary resources/materials/information from Marvin would put me in good stead. Indeed it has in a way (and I am heavily indebted to him for his generosity) but there’s so much more I need to learn for myself in order to be a good music teacher. Perhaps I could start with developing an ability to be firm, decisive, give clear/concise instructions and build relationships with the students.
I learnt that making a conscious effort to consistently build caring and trusting relationships with students is crucial and indispensible. Again, taking an example from my experience with dear Sec 1/7, throughout the semester I was very fierce with them, scolding and punishing individuals each week because I simply didn’t know what else to do when they started getting mischievous/defiant/disruptive. (The worst was when one of them fired off the fire extinguisher!!) The negative reinforcements certainly didn’t work well and did not create any positive impact at all. In fact on two occasions, the students commented that I needed to ‘relax’ and ‘learn to have a sense of humour’. (Perhaps I do need to learn these as well.) Despite all these seemingly bad experiences, I really appreciate having to teach 1/7. Yes, I really do and that was what I told the class on the last day of school as they were all busy discussing about their report cards they received from their teacher earlier on. As usual, I had to raise my voice over their huge din to speak to them. But something really interesting and never seen before happened after my first declaration. Many students went “Shhh! Shhh!” and started to settle down. I repeated myself again since it seemed to work and just in case some didn’t hear it the first time, “I honestly and sincerely appreciate having to teach your class the last semester”. I went on to explain amongst several other things that I had only wanted them to learn and take away with them useful lessons and skills, but that could not take place if everyone was not cooperative and hence the frequent punishment and scolding. I appreciate them for their liveliness and transparentness because their behavioural responses helped to reveal many loopholes in my teaching and planning and thus makes good learning experiences for me. It is amazing how ready and willing they are to listen and respond positively when they know that I do in fact like them and care about them. If only I had been able to express it to them during the semester and not only scoldings. Their responses became more supportive and positive as I ended by telling them that I still look forward to seeing them the following year if I get to teach them again.
